I'm going to assume you're reforging on the "1st week gear" is incorrect. I haven't done the weights but judging by your trends it's almost certainly better to reforge the crit on items with hit to expertise as it's 340 rating= 1% for both hit and expertise last I checked. This may be the same for the hit/mastery or hit/haste items depending on what you're simming on weights.

I'm operating under the assumption that the expertise giving spell hit is a bug until it either goes live with the pre-patch or is clarified by a blue one way or another.

If it goes live with the pre-patch next week and there are no blue posts about it, I'll re-do the gear set with expertise in mind.

Originally Posted by Malmar

Great work on these guides, they are much appreciated.

Small thought: Considering the number of fights that start with BL at the top I've been finding good results with a short meta at the beginning of the fight:

It uses Imp swarm with DS:K at the start of the fight which is a nice boost to some pretty major damage they do.
It maximises uses of DS:K throughout the fight, lining it up nicely (with a slight underlap) with Imp Swarm.
It maximises the bloodlust openings that have been frequent in previous raid tiers. MoP may change this of course.

On the minus side I'm seeing an approximate 4 second window where meta drops and DS:K is still up, but with the delay between the two HoGs leading to more ticks (and fury generation) coupled with the imp swarm fury generation within meta, it lasts much longer than you'd think at the top of a fight. You also end up with a heck of a lot of MC procs just after meta which take advantage of buffs that are still up from the top.

Simcraft will probably prove me wrong, but first hand experience from dummies, MoP dungeons, and all those times when I've raided and I know that the start of a fight is when you're standing still and actually executing your rotations well, tell me this might be a better opener. And all at the cost (Unless I'm missing something?) of 4 seconds os DS:K.

You're very right about this. It just makes sense that you'll want maximum uptime of Meta during bloodlust, and to use Dark Souls as often as possible. I haven't specified exactly when to go into Meta because I'm not completely sold on the absolute optimal way to go about doing this, but you're on the right track and it's something I'm experimenting with at the moment.

If it's of interest, I've found a cast sequence macro (as hateful as they are) leads to much improved casting speed at the top of the fight, and less of that demo-typical mental-ability-listing when we open up.

Why would you ever put a hybrid gem in a red socket instead of http://mop.wowhead.com/item=76694? Perhaps this was a formatting error, as the guide on your actual site shows the 160 Int bonus in the stats column.

I'm operating under the assumption that the expertise giving spell hit is a bug until it either goes live with the pre-patch or is clarified by a blue one way or another.

If it goes live with the pre-patch next week and there are no blue posts about it, I'll re-do the gear set with expertise in mind.

As someone else mentioned it was confirmed as intended buy a blue post a couple weeks ago.

Originally Posted by evralia

You're very right about this. It just makes sense that you'll want maximum uptime of Meta during bloodlust, and to use Dark Souls as often as possible. I haven't specified exactly when to go into Meta because I'm not completely sold on the absolute optimal way to go about doing this, but you're on the right track and it's something I'm experimenting with at the moment.

As far as BL and meta I think you are likely wrong in your instinct to want to maximize the amount of time spent in Meta during bloodlust. I haven't had a looked at where our GCD is and keep in mind that even though we do more dps in meta during a BL due to a reduced GCD we are also spending fury faster due to the reduced GCD but our damage per fury is constant. My guess is that it will be better to make sure meta is being used for the full 20 seconds of dark soul more so than increased up time during BL.

Actually, it wasn't the meta per se that seems to be upping the dps so much, that's just an added bonus, but the use of both wild imps and GServ within the DS. In Simc Wild imps alone makes up 10% of our damage.

In, say, a six minute fight, (and according to the rotation in the guide) only two of the three Wild imp CD's would have the DS boost, let alone the meta boost, and when you couple that with (a) the potentially lower number of GoServ and DS uses across the fight due to the late start and (b) the added difficulty of blowing on-use trinkets either at the start with bl or when at full fury with Meta I suspect that, as they say, a bird in the hand will equal two in the bush. In other words blow it all early and KNOW you're maximising all trinkets, pots, procs, indeed everything but 4 seconds of DS with Meta. Which, as you so rightly say, is potentially near GCD capped anyway. Don't forget those guaranteed MC procs that you'll have off the back of meta having all that buffy goodness too.

Like I say, I'm probably wrong, and hopefully someone better versed than I at Simc coding can prove it, but go try it yourself and look at the numbers, they're a lot of fun

Like I say, I'm probably wrong, and hopefully someone better versed than I at Simc coding can prove it, but go try it yourself and look at the numbers, they're a lot of fun

I tend not to spend much time with SimC priority lists until we know that it's working correctly and beta numbers have stabilized. When you're talking about things that provide dps gains on the order of 1-2% it's not really worth doing until then.

Why would you ever put a hybrid gem in a red socket instead of http://mop.wowhead.com/item=76694? Perhaps this was a formatting error, as the guide on your actual site shows the 160 Int bonus in the stats column.

Simple maths. Hybrid gems come with 80 Intellect and 160 of the hybrid stat, so if the hybrid stat weights is any more than 50% of Intellect stat weight's value (which for Demo, it is), then you use the hybrid gem.

80 * 4.52 = 361.6

160 * 2.36 = 377.6

= 739.2

160 * 4.52 = 723

In all previous expansions, hybrid gems had the same amount of Intellect as they did to the secondary stat, which is why they were never used in red slots.

Simple maths. Hybrid gems come with 80 Intellect and 160 of the hybrid stat, so if the hybrid stat weights is any more than 50% of Intellect stat weight's value (which for Demo, it is), then you use the hybrid gem.

80 * 4.52 = 361.6

160 * 2.36 = 377.6

= 739.2

160 * 4.52 = 723

In all previous expansions, hybrid gems had the same amount of Intellect as they did to the secondary stat, which is why they were never used in red slots.

By those same simple maths shouldn't you be socketing with pures and not hybrids in everything except red? I doubt that you are so close to thresholds that 160 of the secondary is better than 80 int only for the first half of the stat on the gem....

This might be an unreasonable request but I would love to see an *Optimal* DA Tank guide. I know the lack of crit immunity is a literal punch in the face but with proper use of cooldowns it should be possible to tank dungeons(maybe heroics) with a group of friends. Simcraft won't be much help but a good guide might provoke some discussion from the players out there who like doing the math on these kind of things. In any case its nice to see a consistently updated guide for each spec I thank you for your hard work.